Wild Heather

"Oh, are you indeed Lady Carrington?" I asked.

"Yes, I am; and I am going to town to meet your father and Sir John. You were a very little girl when I had the pleasure of last speaking to you; now you are a young woman."

"Yes," I replied. Then I added, looking her full in the face, "I suppose I am quite grown-up; I am eighteen."

"Do you mind telling me, Miss Grayson, if you are going to live with your father?"

"I think so," I replied.

She looked very thoughtful. After a minute she said:

"You can confide in me or not, Miss Grayson. I ask for no confidences on your part that you are not willing to give, and if you would rather not tell me, I will not press you."

"What do you want to say?" I asked.

"Have you any idea why you have been separated from your father for ten long years?"

"My father was in India," I replied, "and Aunt Penelope says that India is not thought good for little girls. I liked it immensely when I was there, but Aunt Penelope says it injures them in some sort of fashion. Of course, I cannot tell how or why."

"And that is all you really know?"

"There is nothing else to know," I replied.

She was silent, leaning back against her cushions. Just as we were reaching Victoria she bent forward again, and said:

"Heather – for I must call you by that name – I have known your father for years, and whatever the world may do, I, for one, will never forsake him, nor will my dear husband. I have also known your mother, although she died many years ago. For these reasons I want to be good to you, their only child. So, Heather, if you happen to be in trouble, will you come to me? My address is 15a, Princes Gate. I am at home most mornings, and at all times a letter written to that address will find me. Ah! here we are, and I see your father and – and my husband." She abruptly took my hand and squeezed it.

"Remember what I have said to you," was her next remark, "and keep the knowledge that I mean to be your friend to yourself."

The train drew up at the platform. Father clasped me in his arms. He introduced me to Sir John Carrington, who laughed and said: "Oh, what a changed Heather!" and then my father spoke to Lady Carrington, who began to talk to him at once in a very earnest, low voice. I heard her say:

"Where are you taking her?" but I could not hear my father's reply.

Then the Carringtons drove off in their beautiful motor-car, and father and I stepped into a brougham, a private one, very nicely appointed, my luggage – such very simple luggage – was placed on the roof, and we were away together.

"Now I want Anastasia," I said.

"We'll find her if we can," said father. "You'd like her to be your maid, wouldn't you, Heather?"

"Oh, yes," I answered. "I did miss her so awfully." And I told father how I had run to the railway station to meet the next train on that terrible day long ago and how Aunt Penelope had followed me.

He laughed, and said I was a rare plucky one, and then we drew up before a grand hotel and entered side by side. We were shown immediately into a private sitting-room, which had two bedrooms opening out of it, one for father and one for me. Father said:

"Heather, I mean to show you life as it is, and to-night we are going to the theatre. We shall meet a friend of mine there – a very charming lady, who, I know, will be interested in you, and I want you to be interested in her too, as she is a great friend of mine."

"But I only want you to be great friends with me," I said.

Father laughed at this, got a little red, and turned the conversation.

"What dress have you for the theatre?" he asked.

"I don't think I have any," I said. "I don't possess any evening dress."

"But that won't do," he replied. "What is the hour? We really haven't an instant to lose."

He looked at the clock on the mantelpiece.

"We can manage it," he said. He spoke down a tube, and presently was told that his carriage awaited him.

"Come, Heather, come," he said. "You must be togged up properly for to-night."

After my very quiet life at Hill View this complete change made me so excited that I scarcely knew how to contain myself.

We got into the brougham and drove to a smart shop, where fortunately a pretty dress of soft black was able to be procured. This was paid for and put into a box, and we returned to the hotel, but not before father had bought me also some lilies of the valley to wear with the dress.

I went up to our sitting-room alone, for he was busy talking to a lady who seemed to have the charge of a certain department downstairs, the result of which was that after tea a very fashionable hairdresser arrived, who arranged my thick dark hair in the latest and most becoming fashion, and who even helped me to get into my black dress. When I joined father my eyes were shining and my cheeks were bright with colour.

"Oh, what fun this is!" I said.

"Yes, isn't it?" he answered. "Where are your flowers?"

I had put them on, but he did not like the way I had arranged them, so he settled them himself in a more becoming manner, and then he slipped a single string of pearls round my white throat and showed me – lying on a chair near by – a most lovely, dainty opera cloak, all made in pink and white, which suited me just perfectly.

"Now, we'll have some dinner, and then we'll be off," he said. "Lady Helen Dalrymple will admire you to-night, Heather, and I want her to."

Who was Lady Helen Dalrymple?

CHAPTER V

It certainly was a wonderful night. Lady Helen Dalrymple had placed her box at the theatre at our disposal. She was a tall and slender woman, dressed in the extreme height of a fashion which I had never even dreamed about. Her cheeks had a wonderful colour in them, which was at once soft and vivid. Her lips were red and her eyes exceedingly dark. She greeted me with great empressement; her voice was high-pitched, and I cannot say that it impressed me agreeably.

"Welcome, welcome, my dear Heather," she said, and then she invited me to seat myself on the front chair near her own, whereas father sat behind at the back of the box.

The play began, and to me it was a peep into fairy land. I had never seen a play before, but, of course, I had read about plays and great actors and actresses, and this one —As You Like It– took my breath away. I could scarcely restrain my rapture as the different scenes flitted before my eyes, and as the characters – all real to me – fitted their respective parts. But in the midst of my delight Lady Helen bent towards me and said:

"Don't the footlights dazzle your eyes a little, child? Would you not prefer to take this chair and let your father come to the front of the box?"

Now, my eyes were quite strong, and the footlights did not dazzle them in the very least, but I slipped back into the other seat, and, after that, if the truth must be known, I only got little glimpses of the play from time to time. Lady Helen and father, instead of being in raptures over the performance, kept up a running fire of whispered talk together, not one word of which could I catch, nor, indeed, did I want to – so absorbingly anxious was I to follow the story of Rosalind in the Forest of Arden.

When at last the performance was over, father suggested that we should all go to the Savoy Hotel for supper, where, accordingly, we went. But once again, although there was a very nice table reserved for us, father and Lady Helen did all the talking, and I was left in the cold. I looked around me, and for the first time had a distinct sense of home-sickness for the very quiet little house I had left. By this time Aunt Penelope would be sound asleep in bed, and Buttons would have gone to his rest in the attic, and the parrot would have ceased to say "Stop knocking at the door!" I was not accustomed to be up so late, and I suddenly found myself yawning.

Lady Helen fixed her bright eyes on my face.

"Tired, Heather?" she asked.

I had an instinctive sort of feeling that she ought not to call me Heather, and started back a little when she spoke.

"Oh, you need not be shocked, Heather," said my father. "Lady Helen is such a very great friend of mine that you ought to be only too proud when she addresses you by your Christian name."